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Six-Part Series Highlights Women Who Made America

Press Release

Airdate:

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - 7:00pm

PBS premieres a series of six new one-hour MAKERS documentaries. The series premieres Tuesday, September 30 at 8:00 p.m. and continues through November 4 with the stories of women in six spheres of influence—comedy, Hollywood, space, business, politics, and war.

The films, directed and produced by the country’s leading independent filmmakers, build on the multi-platform initiative developed by AOL that aims to be the largest collection of women’s stories ever assembled and includes a growing collection of over 250 original interviews online at MAKERS.com.

The new six-part series expands on the critically acclaimed three-hour PBS documentary MAKERS: Women Who Make America, which premiered in February 2013, and told the story of the American women’s movement over the last half-century. More than 4.3 million viewers tuned into the 2013 MAKERS premiere.

“MAKERS is not just a media project, it is a movement,” says Dyllan McGee, Founder and Executive Producer of MAKERS. “Each documentary in this six-part series examines the impact of the women’s movement on six fields once largely closed to women.”

In the last half-century, women have fought their way into nearly every sphere of American life, from the battlefield to the comedy club, the soundstage to the Senate. In each field, women have profoundly reshaped the central institutions of American life and culture. Through intimate interviews with trailblazing women known and unknown, viewers will be given a rare glimpse—sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always candid—of what it was like to be pioneers in their fields.

The films will be available for streaming at video.kued.org after their PBS broadcast.

The series begins with Women in Comedy, which tracks the rise of women in the world of comedy, from the “dangerous” comedy of ‘70s sitcoms like Maude to the groundbreaking women of the 1980s American comedy club boom and builds up to today’s multifaceted landscape. Today, movies like Bridesmaids break box office records and the women of Saturday Night Live are often more famous than their male counterparts. Contemporary comics, including Chelsea Handler, Mo’Nique, Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, Ellen DeGeneres, Jane Lynch, and Kathy Griffin, talk about where women started in this competitive, male-dominated profession and where they are determined to go.

The series continues in October and November with Women in Hollywood, Space, War, Business, and Politics.